Three months since my last confession…

Truth is that not much has been happening to blog about.
Most of my posts are borne out of some problem, issue or investigation but currently, client is on 11g, upgrade was 5 months ago and the database seems to be purring (it’s all relative).

The other factor in lack of output is that blogging is work for the evenings and the arrival of number two son, baby number three, towards the end of May has left the evenings reserved for pure vegging.

I have been meaning to blog about code reuse in a database context – I’m sure I’ll get round to that soon. The background is that in Java and .net development environments, with developers focused on reuse, we see a lot of sub-optimal database code, particularly with overuse of function lookups. It’s a drum I’ve banged before but I feel the need to bang again. After all, is not the logic wrapped up in and around a table or view the ultimate in reusability?

What have they got in common? The issues, resolutions or required investigations are all, in their own way, unintuitive or less than obvious. I’m really pleased about the Java one though – it could be a sign that more people are trying to use more bulk interfaces between Java and Oracle rather than row-by-row ORM tat.

The unintuitive thing ties in with some other thoughts and discussions that I’ve had this week. There is plenty of complexity and a dearth of intuition everywhere in IT these days. And people can make a fortune and build a mountain of a reputation writing books and running training courses on the bleeding obvious. Yet people come back from these courses and having read these books thinking they are revelatory….

Again continuing the intuition theme, this week I’ve also joined the Mac bandwagon. Seems to me that Macs used to be the preserve of oddballs and graphics designers, but there seems to be a real snowball of developers coming on board these days.

First impressions – I like it. A lot. But I’ve yet to fully grasp the difference in concepts. It also strikes me a bit like vi (a simple tool which I really like) in that it’s very intuitive and easy ONCE you know what you’re doing.

So, I hope to document my efforts to get up and running VMWare with Oracle Linux, Oracle 11g, some clusterware, ASM and a dose of RAC. This is meant to keep me entertained and focussed on my commute (rather than read the crappy free evening newspapers which tell me the news that I re-read in the paid-for newspaper the next day) but I keep falling asleep. Slow progress is also due to the nature of strictly access-controlled financial environments – my OS and core DBA skills are going rusty because I just don’t have the practice day in day out.

Anyway, hopefully, I’ve two things to file in the not-to-distant future. Until then, you’ve got to put up with this drivel…